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East of Paris - Sketches in the Gâtinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne by Matilda Betham-Edwards
page 16 of 140 (11%)
care of itself. As to climate, its excellence may be summed up in the
epithet, anti-asthmatic. Although we are on the very hem of forty
thousand acres of forest, the atmosphere is one of extraordinary
dryness. Rain may fall in torrents throughout an entire day. The sandy
soil is so thorough an absorbent that next morning the air will be as
dry as usual.

This house reminded me of a tiny side door opening into some vast
cathedral. We cross the threshold and find ourselves at once in the
forest, in close proximity moreover to its least-known but not least
majestic sites. We may turn either to right or left, gradually climbing
a densely wooded headland. The first ascent lands us in an hour on the
Redoute de Bourron, the second, occupying only half the time, on a spur
of the forest offering a less famous but hardly less magnificent
perspective, nothing to mar the picture as a whole, sunny plain, winding
river and scattered townlings looking much as they must have done to
Balzac when passing through three-quarters of a century ago.

This eastern verge of the Fontainebleau forest is of especial beauty;
the frowning headlands seem set there as sentinels jealously guarding
its integrity, on the watch against human encroachments, defying time
and change and cataclysmal upheaval. Boldly stands out each wooded crag,
the one confronting the rising, the other the sinking sun, behind both
massed the world of forest, spread before them as a carpet, peaceful
rural scenes.

I must now describe a spot, the name of which will probably be new to
all excepting close students of Balzac. The great novelist loved the
valley of the Loing almost as fondly as his native Touraine; and if
these pastoral scenes did not inspire a _chef d'oeuvre_, they have
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